METAFICTIONAL NARRATIVES: A POSTMODERN ANALYSIS OF SELECTED SHORT STORIES FROM BORGES’ LABYRINTHS

Abstract

Aim of the Study: The present study addresses the postmodern chaos, multiplicity, and social construction of reality through the analysis of Labyrinths. However, studies on postmodern rebellion and artificiality through metafictional works are limited. Therefore, the present study aims to identify the role of metafictional techniques in creating self-aware, disjointed, and fragmented texts. It also aims to identify distortion, multiplicity, and fragmentation of the contemporary world through fiction.

Methodology: Five short stories are selected from Borges’ Labyrinths (1965) for analysis under Waugh’s (1984) Metafiction. It selects Mckee’s (2003) textual analysis to conduct a qualitative analysis of the selected text and highlight metafictional techniques within texts, which in turn represents the real-life situation.

Findings and Conclusion:

The study finds out that Borges’ short stories are self-conscious and fragmentary that entail description of its own creation. Furthermore, the selected texts are interlinked with previous literature through intertextual referencing creating a complex web of literary world, which could not be created and deciphered in isolation. The intertextual linkages, self-reflexivity, and use of language as a construction tool creates violating and disrupted narratives. Based on the disunified, fragmented, complex and constructed narrative structure of the selected text chaos, artificiality and multiplicity of the postmodern world is reflected. Borges’ collection can be explored from multiple postmodern perspectives like deconstruction, existentialism, intertextuality, and hyper-reality.